My girlfriend got the game for me for my Birthday, but my experience with 2 player Lords of Waterdeep has been a little lukewarm. The "Intrigue" deck is full of mechanics designed to balance the game with 3 or more, allowing players who are behind to hinder the point leader, but with two players, these cards feel painfully under-powered, since many of them grant your lone opponent resources.

We've begun removing the "Mandatory Quests" altogether, since they tend to make the game feel less competitive, rather than more so, but I was thinking of making house rules to help keep the other cards a valuable aspect of the game.

Then it occurred to me that someone else has probably already thought of this. Suggestions?

I used to think that two player was broken, but having played a lot of it on the iPad over the holiday, rather than in person, I think it actually works pretty well. Since you have more agents, you can cover more ground quickly, and that fixes a lot of the issues. And mandatory quests become all the more important in draining your opponents resources, since they inevitably consume a valuable purple or white.

Though I do agree that intrigue basically results in being useful for resource acquisition only. The fact that in two player the other player inevitably gets a bonus as well actually adds to the interest, for me - you have to weigh whether or not you want to help them. I think that's great, personally.

Accelerate Plans can be used to block your opponent from 2 key spots. On round 8 this can be painful.

Free Drinks and any cards that yank a resource from your opponent can be painful as well, because rarely will they have many spare resources towards the end of the game.

All mandatory quests can slow down any quest combos early in the game and also derail them on round 8. If your opponent gets the lieutenant quest early in the game, mandatory quests can delay that until round 3, and possibly 4, making it almost not worth taking.

But it's not the cards themselves. It's the extra turn afterwards.

In 3+ player games, the open spaces are more valuable. In 2 players games; only at certain times will there be crucial spots. This means that you can get almost a half a turn extra with the intrigue cards.

I thought like you did with Free Drinks, but using one agent to steal a single resource is pretty insignificant in a 2 player game, especially if there are any buildings which provide resources, because it's almost impossible to stop your opponent from just getting that resource again.

I think you are overlooking the fact that intrigue cards still net you two actions because you get to place all water deep harbor workers at the end of your turn. And in a two player game space are not at a premium as in 3 and 5 players so there will almost always be a useful spot for you to take.

Yea intrigue cards are really subpar if you had to use a worker solely for them. In 3/5 player games you will find you want to go to waterdeep asap because if you are the last person off of it there are usually no good spaces left open. But in 2/4 players there are more locations open.

One variant you could try (stolen from Dominant Species) is instead of adding an extra agent, you each pick 2 characters and houses and play as both of your characters. The key is that your final score is the lesser of your two characters' scores, so you can't use one of your characters just to boost the other forever since you have to advance them both equally. So in a way you are competing with yourself but in a way you can plan.

2 player Waterdeep is fun! Some intrigue cards might be a bit less powerful, but in return it is more balanced. With more players, certain players get hit more often than others with mandatory quests and some get chosen for benefits more often than others.

My wife and played Lords of Waterdeep solely as a two player game when we first bought it. Overall, I think the Intrigue cards just DON'T work in a two-player game. While the game is still fun overall, we wind up just never playing any intrigue cards the entire game because we don't want the other person to have any more resources than they already have. I understand the point that some people are making in this thread regarding this, but I still think it's a flawed mechanic for two people. When we finally played a game with four people, that's when we saw the game become as awesome as we hoped.
When we don't have anyone else but us, and we're itching for a worker placement game, we just play Agricola: All Creatures Great and Small.

The only intrigue cards that could work decently in my opinion are the mandatory quest cards, or the intrigue cards that allow an opponent to pay you resources for VP. I'm sure there are others that work well enough for two player, but still, having a third person playing would make them work much better. Something about giving my only opponent resources just doesn't sit well with myself or my wife. I would rarely, if it all, use Intrigue cards, and the same goes for her.

But, furreal tho, we should all just come together and create a custom two player intrigue set. Perhaps more mandatory quests, and maybe more cards that cause the other player just to flat out lose resources with the player that played the intrigue card not gaining anything.

The expansion offers a "long-game" variant that might be worth trying. I totally agree with the two player LoW, but I haven't yet tried the long-game with two. Basically you just add an extra starting agent for each player.

For a house rule, have you considered drafting 3 lord cards, and keeping two? Alternatively, you could try drawing a second lord card at the beginning of turn 5, just to spice things up.

Multiple lord cards breaks the balance, IMHO - it becomes far too easy to gain extra points from quests. Instead, focus on acquiring Plot Quests that add these points instead. I use the third spot to reshuffle the quests a lot personally, just to get more of these in the mix.

You could add a caveat that people can't "double count" the same bonus. e.g. If you have a lord that gives 4 for skullduggery/piety, and one for piety/arcana, you can't score the piety bonus for both. Most players don't gun for the endgame bonus specifically anyway, unless it's the ONE lord card that doesn't give bonus for quest types(seriously? only one card?).

To the contrary, it's the endgame bonus that makes the whole game! If those last points aren't significantly changing the balance of your games, then you're clearly not playing it right. E.g., you know that you can complete a quest every turn not just every round right?

Again, those lord points are hard-earned bonuses designed to let you eke out a victory at the end; if you give more bonuses here you effectively break the game, because you can score on more types of quests. The whole point is that it should be hard, because you're vying for those points.

If everything (that is, 4 out of 5 types, from 2 lords) is effectively a +4, there's no reason to try for particular quests, and you can just clean up on all the 20s and 25s in the deck wantonly. If one player only has overlap, the balance is broken, as they only get bonuses on 3 types. So, again, there's really no way to make this tenable without breaking the game.

there's no reason to try for particular quests, and you can just clean up on all the 20s and 25s

I have a friend who plays LoW who ALREADY uses this strategy every game, regardless of his lord card(singular). Every game he either wins, or finishes within 5 points of winning, on every game. Finishing a single 25 point quest, can make up the "loss" of 4-5 quests that someone else did that applied to their bonus.

That's probably my biggest issue with LoW; The lords cards are almost pointless, because they all provide the same bonus (except ONE).

One thing that strikes me is the secret character element. two player seems like there could be a much bigger chance of one player having a lot of quests that map to their character for bonus points at the end.

Maybe pick two characters who overlap on one quest and then have one quest type that doesn't. The quest type wouldn't be a secret anymore but I think it might play better.

Haven't yet made it to the table with this game so interested to see what is posted in this thread.

I think the mandatory quests can be extremely handy in 2 player games, but its a matter of both players having a fair chance by the end of the game.

It's not uncommon for someone to have their last few moves planned out in a way that they can score a big point card on their very last action and steal away a win. So dropping a mandatory quest on them can deny them 10+ points.

Outside of the last action though I'd say they're sorely undervalued in the 2 player, but I felt that way when playing with more players as well. Unless one person gets ganged up on and someone gets hit by several mandatory quests at once.

I like the house rule mentioned to draft 2 and choose 1 though. Can help you get a mandatory quest at the end of the game or a more helpful resource card during the game.

Two-player game works great and is very-well balanced. Mandatory quests work fine in a two-player game, I don't see how they make the game less competitive. I guess the best suggestion I can give you is to play the game online (iPad) and see how it works, two-player games are the most common games there.

I can only give you suggestions re:tactics if you think those would help.

Examples:

-- early mandatory or two can stop the opponent from finishing a crucial quest too early

-- intrigue spam is a viable tactic in two player games; get quests which give you a way to get intrigues

Agreed. What "house rule" could be applied to those cards to make them more useful for a 2 player game? What if the resource given was chosen by the player using the intrigue card? Or should it just be eliminated entirely?

We played today using option 3 and we both really enjoyed that a lot more.

Another problematic Intrigue card is the one that says "Draw a quest for the number of players. Keep one and give the rest to each of the other players." My wife played it and it actually resulted in me winning the game. I'm thinking that we might make this one "Draw 3 Quests, keep 1, give 1 to your opponent, and discard the other."

Try the expansion, especially the Undermountain module. I played a 2 player game with Undermountain where I built an engine around drawing and playing Intrigue cards. Because there were only two players I couldn't be crowded out of Waterdeep Harbour and often played several cards per turn. Undermountain adds a lot of intrigue cards which are good with only 2 players.